Super Bowl ticket prices dropping

If you looked at buying Super Bowl tickets on the secondary market a few days ago and decided against it, you might want to look again.

Connor Gregoire, a communications analyst for SeatGeek.com reports today that “we’ve really seen Super Bowl ticket prices begin to edge downward in the last 24-48 hours.In fact, this year’s Super Bowl is no longer the most expensive we have on record and given prevailing price trends it’s highly unlikely to attain that mark by the time the game comes to a close and all sales data is in.”

He also passed along a few other stats as of Friday afternoon:

— After starting out hot, ticket prices for Super Bowl XLVIII are already in a tailspin as we enter the weekend prior to the game. Within the last 48 hours, the average price paid for Super Bowl XLVIII tickets has been $2,505. That price is downnearly $1,000 (or 27.1%) from the average price of $3,439 paid for SB XLVIII tickets just 3 days ago, in the 24 hour period following the conference championship games.

Stacked up against all Super Bowls dating back to SB XLV, that price ranks as the cheapest average price paid for a Super Bowl ticket on the Thursday and Friday the week prior to game week (or in more succinct terms, prices paid 9 or 10 days prior to gametime). Compared to this year’s average of $2,505, tickets purchased to Super Bowl XLVII ($2,980), XLVI ($3,396) and XLV ($3,080) were all more expensive at this point in time prior to the game.

When taking into account all tickets sold to date for Super Bowl XLVIII, the average price paid for a ticket so far is $3,374. With this average likely to be dragged down further by ticket sales that will be made over the remaining days prior to the game, it looks highly unlikely that this year’s Super Bowl will weigh in as the most expensive ever when it is all said and done, as its average ticket price is already beneath the final average ticket price for Super Bowl XLV ($3,561).

Much of the drop in average ticket prices has been driven by the fall in prices paid for upper deck and end zone seats. In the 24 hours after conference championships, the “get-in” price for the cheapest available upper deck seat was $2,100. But just within the last 24 hours, we’ve seen upper deck seats sell for as little as $1,525. The cheapest seat sold on the lower level in the 24 hours after the conference championships was a Seat in Section 124 for $2,600. Within the last 24 hours, however, the cheapest seat sold in the lower level went for $2,050.

We’d expect a continued decline in prices into next week, though it will be interesting to see if prices do hit some sort of floor or bottom out next week. One area where we have seen some level of a floor is for Club seating with some sort of access to an interior, warmed concourse. Those tickets have held steady with an average sales price of around $7,250 for virtually the entire week.

All of the latest info on prices and ticket availability can be found on SeatGeek’s event page for the game: http://goo.gl/pW2Xl6